Incident Tracker

Jones v Family Court at Whangārei [2026] NZSC 1

dismissal

New Zealand's Supreme Court dismissed a self-represented litigant's leave application after his submissions cited hallucinated authorities from an AI application — real case names with wrong citations and misattributed cases. The Court awarded NZ$500 costs and warned that reliance on unverified AI outputs may, in serious cases, amount to obstruction of justice or contempt of court.

Date of decision/order

2026-02-11

Court

Supreme Court of New Zealand

Jurisdiction

NZ

AI tool

Not identified in the record

Conduct

A self-represented litigant's leave-application submissions cited multiple hallucinated authorities — real case names paired with wrong citations, plus genuine cases misattributed — produced by an AI application. The Supreme Court granted an extension of time but dismissed the leave application and used the judgment to warn about AI misuse in litigation.

Consequence

See outcome